


On the Run

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse and Skyler set off to meet Walt after they all have to get out of dodge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [warriorpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: This was a little rushed to try and get it in before NYR 2012 closed... which, alas, I failed at doing. But here it is, anyway. Due to the rush... this may get a sequel one day :)

“Tell me again,” Jesse murmured quietly as he leaned against the window and looked out into the wide open road. Skyler sighed; Jesse really was like a child sometimes, and at this moment she could understand the whole bizarre father-and-son dynamic he had gotten mixed up in with Walt. That didn’t make it any less annoying, though.

“Walt said that he’s going to meet us in Baltimore. In a little shop right in the Inner Harbor. He’s going to meet us at exactly nine o’clock on exactly Tuesday.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Jesse asked. 

“If he doesn’t… then we figure something else out.” Skyler sighed in exasperation, slamming her hands down on the steering wheel. “Listen, Jesse. You’ve seen far more of him in the past year than I have. How the hell am I supposed to know what he’s planning? Or whether he’s even alive or dead? Is that what you want to hear right now?”

“Sorry Mrs. White.” Jesse rubbed at his eyes. “I guess I’m just… worried.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us. I dropped my kids off at Hank and Marie’s and I’m never going to see them again. Junior is going to hate us for the rest of his life and Holly is going to grow up thinking we both abandoned her.”

“It was just to keep them safe,” Jesse mumbled, looking at the window and thinking of Brock, knowing that soon, Andrea would receive a letter in the mail that held a key to a safety deposit box filled with $2 million in cash, and a letter telling her that he’d loved the two of them more than he had ever loved anyone.

“They wouldn’t ever understand that,” Skyler countered. “Not my son, especially.”

“Maybe they won’t. But… but he’ll know that you loved him. That you wouldn’t abandon him.”

“How would you know, Jesse?” Skyler snapped suddenly. “What the hell are you leaving behind?”

Jesse thought of holding Brock, of brushing back his hair and kissing his forehead, of telling him how brave he was and how proud of him he would always be. Of calling him his son.

“Nothing,” he whispered.

“Then shut up.”

He said nothing for the next twenty miles.

***

Jesse must have fallen asleep at some point, for when he woke up they were parked at a motel. It was a dingy looking place, the same kind of dive he had stayed in with Wendy. He was surprised that Skyler, or Mrs. White or whatever he was calling her in his brain these days, would be willing to stay somewhere like this. Then again, she was pretty tough. He knew better than to say anything about it. Maybe she just wanted to sleep.

He opened his door and got out. His feet felt strange on the ground, as if the concrete wasn’t quite solid or maybe he wasn’t.

“How long are we staying?” he asked.

“Just tonight,” Skyler replied. “You can take the wheel in the morning. I’m tired of driving.”

“Okay,” Jesse agreed. “Two rooms?” She shook her head.

“One.”

Jesse was a little confused that she was this insistent about it when they certainly had the money for two, but again he made no comment and simply walked towards the little check-in office at the edge of the motel.

“I’d like a room for tonight,” Skyler told the man behind the desk, who nodded disinterestedly.

“Eighty dollars,” he replied. “How many beds do you want?” Skyler looked at Jesse and shrugged.

“How many do you have?”

“We’ve only got a room with one queen bed,” the man explained, “Most people come here for…”

“I get the idea,” Skyler cut in. “One bed is just fine.”

***

“I swear to God, Jesse, if you even think of trying something, I’m going to bury you in the ceiling like in Drugstore Cowboy.”

Jesse had never seen the movie, but he believed the threat all right.

“I don’t plan on even thinking of trying anything, Mrs. White,” he told her. And he hadn’t been – honestly it would have all been way too weird and besides, he was terrified of the woman. 

“Okay. Good.” Skyler walked into the bathroom and Jesse heard running water. She must have been taking a shower. He, meanwhile, hopped on his side of the bed and jumped under the covers. He shuddered to think of what might have transpired under these covers, but they were warm and that made them feel oddly safe. Like no one could get him, not here. Not yet. Like there were arms around him. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time. In fact, thinking back, he didn’t know when the last time he had actually felt safe was.  
He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew, Skyler had emerged from the bathroom in a towel and was changing with her back turned to him. He snuck his head under the pillows so as not to peek, and she must have been able to tell because he heard her laugh. It was strange.

She walked, in a bathrobe – when had she packed a bathrobe? – to the bed and slid under the covers next to Jesse. 

Jesse shifted, feeling incredibly awkward. He wondered if he might accidentally end up groping her in the middle of the night – hell, could he sleep with that thought in his mind? She would probably break his neck if he did, even if it was by accident. He really should have asked Jane or Andrea if he had ever groped them in his sleep.  
Jesse pressed the pillow down on top of his face as he faced away from Skyler. This road trip was already way, way too much. He could hear Skyler sighing, probably more in exasperation than exhaustion. 

If he did sleep, he wondered if he would dream of Mr. White. Where was he, now? What was he doing right now? Was he safe? Was he thinking of them… was he thinking of Jesse?  
Jesse was certainly thinking of him, after all. Every moment of every day. Even when he was angry about this whole damned situation, even when he wanted to wring Mr. White’s neck, just the same he hoped that the older man was okay. That he had gotten out of this whole mess alive.

If he could see him now… what would Jesse say? What would he tell him? Would he regret it? Would he say that he hated it, that he really did wish that he had never teamed up with the older man? That he wanted his life back, didn’t want to be on the run with this crazy woman, the same one who had threatened and near-terrified him only a year ago?  
What a difference a year made. What could he even be doing now, if he hadn’t listened to Mr. White’s blackmail that day? If he had called his bluff and said, “All right – turn me in if you want to,” to see if he’d do it?

Maybe he would be in jail, trying to get enough cigarettes together to avoid having to get intimate with his cell mate. Maybe he’d be dead.

Maybe… maybe he would be happy. Maybe he’d have found something that wasn’t running, wasn’t this.

He wouldn’t have met Jane. Or Mike. Or Andrea or Brock or… But he wouldn’t have seen an ATM crush a man’s skull in. He wouldn’t have watched a child get shot.

He didn’t know much of anything anymore. His entire head was swimming. He questioned every decision he had ever made. Where exactly had he turned wrong at first? Where had he gone wrong? If he could have gone back, he would – but he wasn’t sure how far that would have to be. Where could he find a spot where he hadn’t screwed up so badly that he barely wanted to live anymore?

But there must have been some part that wanted to leave. Otherwise he wouldn’t have run, would he? Otherwise he wouldn’t be here, in this strange place, with Mrs. White of all people. 

“Jesse.” He turned his head as he heard the words. It seemed like a long time before he really registered it as Skyler’s voice, though. He breathed out. 

“Yeah?”

“Do you think he’s dead?”

It was hard to truly place the tone of the question. It was a dark question, from somewhere not quite present and not quite imagined.

“I don’t know,” Jesse admitted. “I hope not.” He wished that Mrs. White would agree but just the same, feared that she wouldn’t, that she would say she hoped he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere, buzzards eating his carcass. She didn’t say either of those things. 

All she replied with was, “Hmmm.”

Jesse wondered at that response. Maybe she was just tired, now. Maybe she didn’t have the time to deal with it or she didn’t want to deal with it. Or maybe she just didn’t know. Maybe she was as lost as he was – there was definitely something in those eyes that called out with a plea, that called out to ask whether this whole horrible nightmare would ever come to an end for either of them. He knew that somehow the answer to that was no.

“I think he’s okay,” Jesse offered very quietly. He peeked over at Skyler. Her long blonde hair, wet from the shower, was sticking to the pillow. It gave him a pang in his heart as he thought back to how Jane and Andrea’s hair each did the same, though theirs was such a dark black he could picture marks rubbing off against the white cloth. Skyler’s was so much lighter, so different. He breathed.

“He can handle himself,” Skyler replied dryly. “I don’t think he really needs you saying a prayer for him.” 

Jesse flinched at the words and recoiled. 

“But I…” What could he say? How could he try and describe his feelings for him? The way there was this huge partition of his life before Mr. White and his life afterwards… The way that he cared about the older man and wanted him to be safe… “I just… I don’t want any harm to come to him.”

“Really? Pinkman, you think he gives a shit about us, one way or another?” Skyler fired back. She sat up at that, furiously glaring at him. “You think he’s sitting there, wherever he is, going ‘I sure hope that Skyler and Jesse are okay’? No! He’s worried about saving his own selfish ass.”

Jesse sat up too. He rubbed at his eyes and let out a long, sad sigh. Anguished and tired. 

“He’s saved my life,” he said firmly. “He cares about me, even when he shouldn’t.”

“Should he have ever?” Skyler shot back. “The past year, he’s spent more time with you – a washed up junkie kid – than with his own family!”

“Like you wanted to spend time with him,” Jesse rasped back. “He said that you kicked him out. Then, that you were waiting for his cancer to come back!”

“Weren’t you?”

Jesse shook his head, like a dog that had latched its jaw on to something and was refusing to give it up. Except what he was refusing to give up was this faith in that dickhead Mr. White, even if that faith was turning out to be groundless. Even if Mr. White really wasn’t sitting somewhere worrying about them, thinking about them. Even if he had long since stopped caring and was actually sitting on a beach in Bermuda or something right now. Even if all hope really was gone and Jesse was just living in a dream.

“No. No, I never was,” Jesse vowed. “I… I always wanted that asshole to get better. I still do. I don’t want him to die. Especially not like that. Not so horrible as that.”  
Skyler snorted at the words.

“Better than we’re going to get if someone catches us, thanks to him.”

Jesse rolled his eyes.

“Better than I’m going to get is what you mean. You’re a pretty blonde. Just… cry or something. If I was on a jury, I wouldn’t convict you.”

“You’re prettier than I am, maybe you should take your own advice,” Skyler hissed. “Go to bed, Jesse.”

***

There was a string of motels; after a while they all started looking the same. The only thing that differentiated them was what they had available for the cheap continental breakfasts.  
Slowly, gradually they spoke more and more, and less often of Walt. They spoke of what to watch on the six channels each TV received – somehow, more often than not they settled on the late night reruns of “King of Queens”. They spoke of Baltimore and what it would be like – neither of them had ever been there.

One day they arrived in Fairfax, Virginia, staying in a Motel 6 off a sleepy road where only a few motorists buzzed by every so often. They were more captivated by a church on the side of the road, where a lit-up multicolored cross seemed to beckon, but for what, or whom, they didn’t know.

They started to sleep a little closer to each other on the bed, and Jesse gradually became less worried about groping her in his sleep. If he hadn’t done it so far, he figured, he was probably in the clear.

The next day, they would drive straight on to Baltimore.

***

The first thing that they did was get rid of the car.

Jesse and Skyler walked down a road and arrived at the Greyhound Bus Station in Baltimore, from which they boarded the 27 bus headed for downtown and parts beyond.  
“We should transfer up ahead,” Skyler told Jesse. “That’s what he told us to do.”

Jesse looked at her for a long time. He rubbed at his nose and pictured Mr. White waiting in that little café near the Inner Harbor.

His finger lingered, hooked on the rope that he would pull to signal that they wanted that stop.

His finger quivered. It shook.

He let the stop pass.

“You weren’t paying attention,” Skyler chastised. 

Jesse looked straight at her.

“Yes, I was.”


End file.
